UAW to work hard for Obama

DETROIT (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said on Tuesday that the union would work hard for the election of Democrat Barack Obama for U.S. president and push for passage of a key union organizing law.

"I know, based on the number of members that we have registered, based on our polling ourselves, input that we get, we're going to come in with a very, very high margin behind our endorsed candidate," Gettelfinger told reporters at the Reuters Auto Summit when asked about the UAW's backing of Obama.

"I don't look for us to be any different than what we have been," Gettelfinger said. "We're very effective; we have a very effective political action program. We're ready to go."

Michigan is a key swing state in the November election, with polls showing Obama and Republican John McCain in a tight race despite thousands of job losses in the struggling U.S. auto industry.

Gettelfinger said the UAW and other unions were working to focus the election on issues like losses of jobs, pensions and benefits among blue-color workers; a struggling U.S. middle class; rising home foreclosures; soaring energy and health costs; rising government debt and soaring trade deficits.

"It appears to me that the Republicans are running a campaign based on distraction, and they don't want to talk about the issues because they can't talk about the issues," Gettelfinger said.

In 2007, U.S. automakers saw their share of the domestic market dip below 50 percent for the first time ever. UAW membership fell 14 percent last year to 464,910, its lowest level since 1941.

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT

Gettelfinger said passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA, remained a key objective for the UAW.

Blocked in Congress for years, EFCA legislation would let workers organize by signing union authorization cards, set a time line for first contracts between unions and employees, and impose higher fines for violating employee rights to organize.

UAW organizing of U.S. plants owned by foreign automakers has been hampered by companies seeking to intimidate workers, Gettelfinger said.

"The way organizing works today would be like you running for governor of the state of Michigan. The only thing is you can't come into Michigan, and you couldn't campaign inside Michigan. And your opponent would be inside Michigan and running all day long," Gettelfinger said.

"They intimidate workers, they fire workers. If I come in here right now and you were running an organizing drive and I just walked over to you and said, 'You're fired,' that's going to resonate throughout the building."

Jim Lentz, president of Toyota's (7203.T) U.S. unit, which operates several nonunion plants, told the Reuters Summit later on Tuesday that its U.S. workers did not want unions.

"You'd have to ask our employees but so far they're saying no," Lentz said. "As long as we continue to be true to our culture of respecting our associates, listening to our associates, we're in pretty good shape."

Corporate critics claim union backing of the EFCA amounts to denial of workers' rights to a secret vote on whether to join a union. But Gettelfinger said UAW support of EFCA was the same as with its support of any organized political vote.

"We don't tell anybody how to vote," Gettelfinger said. "One thing we don't do is we don't want to get in the voting booth with anybody. But what we do want to do is make sure that people are informed when they go in and cast their vote."

He said an official in a town where one foreign-owned plant operated was quoted in media reports as saying "pro-union workers will be branded and that they'll have a difficult time getting a job. And that sets the tone for why we need an Employee Free Choice Act."

"Sixty million people would join the unions but they're afraid to," Gettelfinger said. "It's lopsided right now."

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Additional reporting by Scott Malone, Jui Chakravorty, Kevin Drawbaugh and Nick Zieminski)

(Writing by Peter Bohan, Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Dave Zimmerman)

(For more on the Reuters Autos Summit, see ID:nN15267022